Manga Match 97 More Various Manga I've Read

Pardon if my review seems a bit lackluster, but I'm just trying to wrap up loose ends while I still have time and to go into the new year fresh.

Shinobi Quartet
Ninja reverse harem with a rich daughter that all of them want to protect

:) I hope that this is enough of a synopsis for you to gauge if you want to read it.

It's cute if you're into those otome games where there's various capture targets and they all pretty much like you. I haven't looked that much into it, but if it was based off an otome game I wouldn't be surprised.


I'm a Villainous Daughter so I'm Going to Keep the Last Boss
This is another story with that josei isekai thing going on. This girl reincarnates into her otome game as the villain Irene. She realizes that the way to avoid her bad endings and dying essentially is to capture the Demon King Claude as her own. Along the way she does what every girl in these isekai does and charms everyone with her otherworldliness (surprise surprise) and improves the living conditions of the land. It's surprising how many of these people make soap as the thing they sell in these new worlds, although it does make sense for hygiene reasons. Long story short she ends up in a  fairytale romance with Demon King Claude and they live happily ever after. And Claude is a very wholesome and lovable boy. :)


My Male Friend
This is a Korean manhwa about my favorite trope, say it together with me everyone, the childhood friend trope. It gave me a lot to think about. And it's very very cute. I love this kind of manhwa feeling, it makes me vaguely reminisce about Our Relationship is if you know that manhwa as well.


Mainichi Kiss Shite Ii Desu ka?
Apparently I also read this but never reviewed it. Oops. But it was alright, nothing to write home about.

Manga Match 96 No Longer Heroine

I think I just have a problem where if the manga's morality/believable nature is bad enough, I can't put it down. That's exactly what happened with this manga. Because I think if you've read enough shoujo, you start to put yourself in the main heroine's shoes. That's where the idea of this manga stems from. You believe you're this fairytale perfect heroine that's super righteous and always immaculately beautiful, gracious, and perfect both inside and out. Obviously though we're not all the main heroine of a shoujo manga for one reason or another. So this manga explores the reality of being grounded and not allowing yourself to be swept up in these delusions.

{Spoilers}

The story follows this girl named Hatori that thinks shes the main heroine in this made up love story she came up with in her head between her longtime friend Rita and herself. Rita goes out with any girl that shows interest in him just about, but Hatori plays this off as if it's no big deal. After all, she always tells herself, the end game will be between herself and Rita after all. But in life, there's never any guarantees. Rita ends up falling in love with an unlikely "side character" named Adachi. Their relationship is super wholesome with the cliche "boy protects meek nerdy girl from being bullied and teaches her to love herself" kind of arc. Hatori, of course, sees this and immediately feels threatened. Here comes a genuine heroine that loves Rita, even if she's a bit submissive, and they're living happily. Hatori's place in Rita's life is being claimed by Adachi inch by inch.

Hatori is also kind of a jerk. When she feels her place being threatened, she doggedly pursues Rita, confessing her love finally because she can't stand to see her place being overtaken by this random girl. And I think if you've ever had an unrequited love and were ever too scared to confess, you can really sympathize with Hatori. Of course the way she goes about it is incredibly immoral, but somehow you can't help but feel bad for her in these times of desperation. At least I can, a little oop.

Then along comes another variable to mess things up even more, playboy Hiromitsu. He comes into the picture as this playboy that'll help Hatori forget all about her love woes. And while Hatori's busy trying to suppress her feelings for Rita finally, Rita and Hiromitsu both catch feels for this dumb girl. Okay, I say dumb girl, but please don't take offense. She's just trying her best to forget Rita, even though she obviously can't because she keeps going back to him which just hurts Hiromitsu who genuinely fell in love with her more.

In between this time and the end is this sort of tug of war with Hatori. On one hand, Rita finally loves her back. On the other, she's got this sweet patient boy Hiromitsu who genuinely loves her and wants to treat her right. Maybe I've just got serious sympathy for the second leads, but Hiromitsu is such a nice boy, so why can't Hatori see that?

By the end of the story, Hiromitsu's let go of possibly the first girl he ever truly loved. Adachi realized she can find her own happiness and can be loved. And Rita and Hatori lived happily ever after in their idiotic couple world. Obviously there was a lot more turmoil involved that gave me lots of secondhand stress, but that was the gist of it.

Shoutout to Nakajima for being honestly too good of a friend to Hatori. Even when she kinda caught feels for Rita, she realized what was happening. And she was always so patient and loving towards Hatori, even if it was displayed through lots of tough love. She was the realest one.

Overall, if you've ever felt like shoujo was getting kinda stale and you're looking for a spicy story that's in the same vein as shoujo but a new spin to it, I'd say check this manga out. There's many questionable twists and turns in the story that'll keep you hooked.

Manga Match 95 Happy Cafe

Truly I've been reading this manga that was completed already over a decade ago for a while now. I think I had started it when I was in a place where I just wanted to read something fluffy and completed to distract me from the stressors of daily life I'd been facing during the quarter what with moving in, settling down, learning how to live by myself, how to properly budget but also treat myself well, and how to deal with the massive workload I gave myself. I'm pleased to say that I was able to accomplish all of that with average success, but this was at the expense of my anime/manga time. So, only just now, have I finished this long manga. 

If you're looking for something that's pretty wholesome and is able to distract you momentarily from the stress of living in this world, this is the manga for you. It follows this girl named Uru who's in high school and works part time at a cafe run by two ikemen Shindo and Ichiro. Uru has recently moved out of her mom's house and knows straight away that she wants to work at this cafe because the cakes made by Shindo always fill her with a sense of happiness she wants to give to the world as well. She's the human embodiment of "happy-go-lucky" and nothing much changes throughout the series, except for maybe the arc where the true cause of her father's death comes to light. Other than that, her happy-go-lucky attitude is her driving force throughout the series to act as the glue for all of the cafe customers. In fact, if she wasn't exactly the way she is, I think it'd be hard for so many of the problems the customers came in with to be resolved. Basically, this manga just follows their daily lives in the cafe, as neighbors, and as normal people puzzling out their place in the world. 

And since it's shoujo it always flirts around with this idea of romance among the cafe workers, but we can kind of set that aside, since Shindo is practically handed the title of "main love interest" from the get-go. 

Overall, it's a wholesome manga that adds that little bit of brightness to an otherwise harsh day. I think we could all benefit from internalizing a little bit of Uru's cheer. 

Manga Match 94 Kin no Tamago

It's been so long since I last finished anything or at least it feels that way. The school year is just zipping by with roommate difficulties, academic difficulties, and extracurriculars on top of that. But we're almost done everybody!

{Spoilers, but it's slice of life}

Now, I dunno about y'all, but my classic anime/manga girl reference for ditzy, happy-go-lucky girls is Yui from K-On! So, imagine Yui, except she's a light novel editor for a publishing company. And instead of playing the guitar with her friends and having a grand ol' time, her dream is to publish a novel that sells 10 million copies.

Great, so now after that quick visualization exercise you now have: Sakurai Tamako. Her boss accidentally called her Tamago so that's where the whole golden egg thing came from if you were curious.

This is a really cutesy kind of slice of life meant for you to read after a long and stressful day of school/work. Tamako is just starting out at this publishing company and she has this super ambitious goal to one day publish a work that sells 10 million copies. This doesn't go as smoothly as we might hope, but it's more about enjoying the journey anyways, right? So Tamako ends up having to do tons of research and training reading lots of light novels and going to bookstores and seeing how everyone advertises their products. Her story is basically one of perseverance throughout tough times as you work towards your ambitious goal.

The story stops after 19 chapters and 2 volumes, so we'll never know if Tamako is able to reach her goal, but at her trajectory and with the supporting characters around here I'd say she's got a pretty good chance.

Overall, if you're really stressed out and you just need some cute happy-go-lucky girl with josei manga vibes to unwind, this is the story for you. It's not too heavy and the humor is pretty solid with some nice chuunibyou moments and such that I personally enjoyed.